‘Except, of course, what might have been.’ Flinty gazed out at the valley again. Or over decades of choices, perhaps, of potential Flinty lives that had never been, and possibly — probably — it was best that they had not. ‘We’ve all had our might-have-beens.’

Chapter 50

Chapter 50

Tropical Celebration Fruitcake

15oz sugar, 8oz butter, 4 eggs, 13oz plain flour, 6fl oz pineapple or orange juice, 8oz finely chopped pineapple, 8oz grated pawpaw or carrot, 5oz chopped cashew or macadamia nuts

Beat sugar and butter; add eggs one by one; gently mix in other ingredients. Bake at 200˚C for about 1 hour till firm to touch. Keeps 2 days.

Icing

Mix icing sugar with enough passionfruit to be spreadable.

Ice cake when cold. Scatter on more chopped cashew nuts.

MOUNT HEBRON, QUEENSLAND, 1888–99

CLANCY

They married in the small church at Mount Hebron. The groom had carefully omitted to mention that his fiancée was a native when he’d obtained the licence from the sleepy clerk. Clancy was not sure what Queensland or New South Wales laws might affect a white man marrying a black woman, or even if a native needed permission to marry. He had no intention of ever finding out: neither state had any right to interfere in the love of two people. Perhaps the priest who married them had made a similar decision.

The Mount Hebron property belonged to McKenzie’s mate, Rafael Rodriques. There was no mountain anywhere near it, just sugar cane to the horizon and men with naturally dark skins, as well as others with skins burned dark by the sun, slashing at the black-stemmed cane after the burning that killed the rats, the diseases they carried and, hopefully, most of the deadly snakes that fed on them and could kill a man in minutes, and which filled the air with a strange sweet smoke that clung to everything. Even Clancy’s wedding suit stank of it.

Rose looked like the sunrise, like fresh-barked red gums after rain. He had bought her a rose-pink dress, but her long veil of embroidered tulle with an edge of lace was white, and Mrs Rodriques — whose father had come from Malta, not Portugal like her husband — had made her a circlet of rosebuds from the one hardy pink rose that clambered along the subtropical fences.

Mrs McKenzie wore mauve silk trimmed with rosebuds — Rose must have embroidered those. She could sew anything, this woman of his, even if she couldn’t cook. McKenzie gave the bride away and Tiger, in the first suit he had ever owned, was best man, which he claimed was the proudest moment of his life. They’d brought a photographer up from Brisbane, so Tiger now had a precious photo to keep in his saddlebags.